Are you facing pressure from investors on your current marketing performance?

Too often, we fall prey to over-reporting marketing metrics and under-reporting marketing success. While the marketing team is privy to deep analytics, investors, owners and executives typically only need to know 5 metrics:

1. Increase in website traffic, which measures marketing awareness.
2. Increase in email open rates, which measures how effectively marketing is moving people from awareness of the offering to consideration of the offering.
3. Increase in form completions and calls, which measure how effectively marketing is inspiring people to become intentional about using the offering.
4. Increase in sales as measured in new patient numbers or move-ins, depending upon industry.
5. Any fluctuation in investment and/or returns.

When you are developing this process, it is important to examine the journey from beginning to end. Consider the context in which you will share developments with investors. Will it be in a phone call, in-person meeting or Zoom session?

Next, identify how often this will take place. It’s suggested to report each of these metrics once monthly and to show year-over-year trends. This will help establish a cadence of accountability on reporting and mutual trust. Moreover, this will minimize urgent surprise calls from nervous investors.

Then identify the players: who will compile the reports, who will be present for the reporting sessions and who will review the data with investors and other leaders? If the objective is to bolster trust, you want to foster the right relationships over time.

Choose a recurring day on which reports will be pulled. Complete downloaded reports should be parsed by a competent marketer so as to be simple and clear to an investor. Considering your audience, it may be more effective to compile a deck in Keynote or PowerPoint with figures, graphs and charts broken up and accompanied by text for reference. This serves to augment the verbal explanation by reinforcing the most important information and providing a static point of reference for your audience. For example, a graph of click-through rates could be accompanied by a simple definition of the term and the average industry CTR for reference.

By creating a thorough procedure that considers every step of the process, you can update your investors with clarity and confidence.

The Importance of Process

Defined processes are an integral part of a well-functioning society. Public education, taxation, mail delivery, the criminal justice system and other such pillars are predicated upon detailed processes. For all their shortcomings, they are all quite remarkable systems as a whole and serve as true testaments to human ingenuity. They reflect the invaluable role that established and repeatable processes play in achieving seemingly insurmountable goals.

Marketing is arguably of similar importance to these systems, especially when it comes to connecting people in need to vital services like healthcare or senior living solutions. It can also help people and organizations achieve lofty financial goals, which in turn contribute to the livelihoods of all those in their employ. Once again, it is processes that help pave the way from ambitious objectives to prosperity. They are a key element to marketing success, second in importance only to the people involved in its execution.

Sound internal processes should be well defined, comprehensible to new team members and rooted in data or proven performance. Taking confident action informed by wisdom and experience is integral to efficacy; those that take an improvisational or impulsive approach to marketing are all but assured to fall short of their goals. To look at it another way, a professional football team would not take the field without a playbook or having run extensive drills on the plays contained therein. Marketers must approach all endeavors, from branding to strategy, with unwavering intention.

Its Many Applications

It is not just the marketing itself that requires defined procedures. Related organizational measures must also have structured steps to truly be effective. One of the most poignant examples of this is for keeping investors up to date on marketing progress and performance. For one thing, they deserve to stay apprised of new developments in light of the financial liability they have undertaken in service to your organization. For another, it is important that you are able to successfully and effectively communicate your success in order to remain financially secure.

Still facing pressure from investors surrounding your current marketing performance? Big Buzz offers a free SWOT analysis to get you the insights you need to make the next right marketing move. Why is the session free? Because we are passionate about solving complex marketing problems. Get your free analysis here.

Big Buzz is a marketing agency delivering a steady stream of move-in-ready leads to teams serving the senior living industry. For more than 15 years, Big Buzz has helped senior living marketing and sales teams nurture leads to increase occupancy, grow and scale. CEO Wendy O’Donovan Phillips is the author of the book Flourish!: The Method Used by Aging Services Organizations for the Ultimate Marketing Results, has been published in McKnight’s, has been a regular contributor to Forbes, and has been quoted in The Washington Post, ABC News and Chicago Tribune. The Big Buzz leadership team regularly lectures in front of audiences ranging from 25 to 3,000 attendees, including at Argentum and various LeadingAge chapters. Agency awards and accolades include recognition for excellence by the American Marketing Association, Gold Key Award Winner by the Business Marketing Association, HubSpot Academy Inbound Marketing Certification, and Top Advertising and Marketing Agency by Clutch.